Activists lead assault on Tennessee Education Association

NASHVILLE -- Conservative groups are helping push the Republican legislative efforts to outlaw collective bargaining by Tennessee teachers and other bills to curb the influence of the Tennessee Education Association.

Although their numbers were dwarfed by the 200 to 300 teachers opposing the anti-bargaining bill at a hearing Wednesday, tea party activists also attended wearing stickers in support of the bill, along with leaders of Eagle Forum of Tennessee, Family Action Council of Tennessee and other groups.

In the hours leading up to the Senate Education Committee vote on SB 113, Tennessee Tea Party urged members to pressure senators "to stand firm against the teachers unions."

"We have two senators who are holding out and need some pressure applied ... Senators Rusty Crowe and Jamie Woodson," said the tea party's website. Both Crowe, R-Johnson City, and Woodson, R-Knoxville, joined in a 6-3 party-line vote to send SB 113 to the Senate floor. Approval there is expected, given the GOP's 20-13 majority.

Republicans hold a 64-34-1 House majority, but teachers hope they can halt the bill by appealing to moderates.

Family Action Council founder and former GOP state senator David Fowler notified his members about the bill, criticizing "all the liberal social policies that the TEA and its national ally, the National Education Association, stand for," he wrote.

Other bills would prohibit payroll deduction for TEA dues and remove TEA's authority to nominate a teacher member of the state pension system trustees.

The bills' sponsors denied they are retribution for TEA's larger political contributions to Democrats than Republicans, but Fowler said in his Web posting: "Now with Republicans firmly in control, the TEA is on the brink of 'payback'."

Collective bargaining was authorized by the Education Professional Negotiations Act of 1978, which SB113 repeals. Despite assertions by Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, that the act requires "mandatory collective bargaining," it allows local teacher associations to decide by majority vote of members to negotiate with local school boards over salaries, benefits, grievance procedures and other workplace issues.

Teachers in 92 of the state's 136 school districts, including Memphis City Schools, have opted for negotiations; 44 choose not to, including Shelby County Schools.

Salary negotiations are subject to whatever funding is approved by the state legislature and county commissions, not vice versa. That is, salary levels negotiated by school boards are non-binding on legislative bodies and are often reduced to the funding provided.

One argument for the bill by the Tennessee School Boards Association is that, on average, teachers in districts that don't negotiate are paid about $130 more annually than teachers in districts that do. TEA says the figure does not account for all benefits.

Although teacher pay in Tennessee is below the national average, tea party and anti-tax leader Ben Cunningham said he attended Wednesday's hearing to support the bill because he believes collective bargaining leads to higher taxes. "The TEA is invariably in favor of higher taxes and bigger government. They are a political organization," he said.

The bills surfaced when lawmakers reconvened Feb. 7 from a three-week recess. But the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, FACT, Eagle Forum and Professional Educators of Tennessee -- a small conservative alternative to TEA -- quietly laid groundwork. PET and the School Boards Association held a forum on the issue Feb. 10.

In its 2011 "Legislators Guide to Issues," the Center for Policy Research -- which proclaims its views as "free markets, individual liberty, limited government" -- calls for allowing schools and teachers to opt out of salary scales and encourages performance pay for teachers.

Fowler said conservatives are rallying behind the bills because they "have been frustrated with positions taken by the NEA and TEA -- more so by the NEA." These include, he said, support for the "Darwinian view of evolution."

TEA declines labeling the bills an attack by Republicans in general. Winters cites its agreement to a controversial measure that passed last year with heavy GOP support requiring 50 percent of a teacher's annual evaluation to be based on student performance measures. TEA also says it is willing to talk with Gov. Bill Haslam about his tenure-weakening proposals unveiled Thursday.

But Winters did say the 51,000-member TEA is under assault by conservatives. "The fact that the tea party and the Eagle Forum and some of these far-right, out-of-the-mainstream groups are supporting this ought to send a message to the citizens that this is not about education, it's about politics."